3 August 2008

This lake lies between India and Tibet (China) and the military presence is quite high. We had to obtain special passes to be in this area. I've never been anywhere so remote! The lake changed colour depending on what time of day it was.

After a harrowing night time drive back to Delhi, and 3 hours of sleep, we flew to Leh, Ladakh.

We were given the traditional white scarf upon arrival at the hotel and about 10 minutes after I took this pic I was fast asleep. Now in the "Cradle of Buddhism" in the Himalayas, we are at an elevation of 11,483 ft. and visitors are advised to spend a day acclimatizing to the elevation to avoid headaches.

29 July 2008

Midway through our strange journey, we took a 28 hour break at Ananda. Meaning "bliss", it is one of the top spas in the world. This was the only point in the trip where we brushed our teeth with tap water, and ate fresh fruit/salad without worrying.

This is Robin modeling the kurta that we were each assigned to wear around the resort.

26 July 2008

Today we drove northeast from Delhi to Haridwar, which is a very holy city on the banks of the Ganges. We arrived during a full moon festival and it was wall to wall pilgrims. There was a fab festival atmosphere and since our hotel was inaccessible by vehicle, we got to trek through a narrow maze of streets filled with vendors selling everything under the sun.

We attended an Aarti (light)ceremony on the riverbank, which is what the pic is. I stuck my foot in the Ganges but held back from the full body plunge that most Hindus go for. :)

That night we found a restaurant called Piccadelhi which was London Underground themed. A bit of an eye roll as it had half of an old Routemaster bus inside along with red phone boxes and other Londonesque decor, but it was heaving with families and the food was quite nice.

Taken from the backseat, this is a flooded intersection we drove through.

We were originally scheduled to drive from Jaipur straight through to Agra (usually a 4.5 hour drive), but that road was closed due to Gudjurat terrorist activity. Instead , we were routed back through Delhi, but the flooding caused roads to be closed and we were diverted twice.

To make it even more interesting, the air conditioning stopped working, we had to change cars/drivers and Robin developed Delhi Belly. At one point, we were stuck in a traffic jam and a random guy jumped into our car to move it out of the way of a truck since our driver had wandered off to see what the holdup was.

12 hours after we left Jaipur, we arrived in Agra. Robin was running a low grade fever, popping Immodium, and moaning a lot. It was all very dramatic but done in the spirit of making light of his illness. Luckily he was better by morning.

25 July 2008

The monsoon arrived 2 weeks early in this part of India for the first time in 108 years and we awoke to flooded streets. We carried on though and toured the Amber Fort, the Water Palace, City Fort, and the Observatory. I also had a fantastic 70 minute aryuvedic massage for about £12!!

I'm going to cheat a bit and add a link to a more clever person's YouTube video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTpCVVevTeI

The bank holiday pushed our HPV assay to Friday. With the exception of the left row (which are controls), each of the dots is a patient sample. We run a test to see if certain types of Human Papilloma Virus are present. If the test is positive, the patient will then know if she is at a higher risk of developing cervical carcinoma.

8 May 2008

7 May 2008

This is the corner where I had my boxes full of stuff to flog on Ebay. They have been there since I moved into the flat in November. Six months later, I have listed it all on Freecycle and I feel like a huge weight has been lifted! Out with the junk!!! :)

*Update: Everything has found a new home and I have my clean space. Very zen. ;)